Home / Poker News September 2012 / The Poker Grapevine – Patrik Antonius Joins ISPT?
The Poker Grapevine – Patrik Antonius Joins ISPT?
Posted by: Randy Williams - Fri, 2012-09-07 10:48
The Partouche Poker Tour has indeed generated plenty of headlines lately, many of them for all the wrong reasons. Besides the controversy surrounding the guaranteed prize-pool of the Main Event, something positive apparently came out of Cannes this week too: the news that Patrik Antonius may have joined the effort to promote the ISPT. Antonius has been seen sporting an ISPT patch, which is indeed quite a major development for the International Stadiums Poker Tour, that has already secured the promotional services of high profile poker players like Liz Lieu, Michael Mizrachi and Sam Trickett. Whether Antonius is onboard with the ISPT for good though is far from certain. According to the ISPT’s website, the Finnish pro agreed to represent the brand for the duration of the Partouche Poker Tour Main Event only for now.
Poker players know Caesars Entertainment Corp. as the company behind the wildly successful
WSOP, as well as a number of brick and mortar gambling operations. It now appears that Caesars is in a bit of financial trouble after its stocks fell for the second consecutive day and after it lost around $241.7 million in the first quarter of the fiscal year.
To add insult to injury, Fitch Ratings has lowered the outlook of the company from stable to negative, a move which didn’t exactly sit well with investors either. The bottom line is that Caesars may be forced to undertake a restructuring effort, which may see the WSOP spin off. Some experts however are cautiously optimistic about the future of the company on account of the extra revenues it may end up generating through interactive gaming.
According to Fitch experts, the Interactive unit of the operation is likely to be left out of any potential restructuring, and since most of the value of Caesars Entertainment Corp. can be attributed to this unit, federally legalized online gaming may well turn out to become the savior of the entire operation.
